Project Management: Core Activity Areas, Risk Register, Project Completion, and Methodologies

Case Scenario 1

You will be able to develop understanding of the core activity areas project managers concern themselves with and how they relate to personal and organisational issues.  

A.A suggested risk register containing at least 10 fully documented risks, including owner, mitigation and contingency actions, pre-and post- action weighting and scores and a (referenced) paragraph to the sponsor explaining why such a register is important

B.An explanation of the need for careful, correctly managed completion of a project. Using theory and suitable examples, tell your sponsor how best you believe the project completion should be structured and managed for your specific case study so as to maximise the benefits available.

C.An analysis and critique of methodologies that might be used to run the project case study, principally comparing Agile, Waterfall and PRINCE2 methodologies. Explain their strengths and weaknesses and give your recommendation to the sponsor as to which methodology you believe would be best to use.  There is no right or wrong answer for this and hence marks will be given on the basis of how well you have explained and justified your decision. As with the other assignment elements, reference examples and reference to theory is very important.

Case scenario 1

You are the Project Manager for an indoor sporting event, organising a sort of ‘Olympics’ between London/Birmingham/Manchester (please choose one based on your location) Higher Education Institutions (HEI), known as the HEI Games.  The senior management at QAHE have asked for this as they wish it to be a flagship event that helps market the QAHE’s facilities.   Assume you have the full academic year to organise this, with the events taking place in July or August.  You have a budget of £20k per university taking part and you should assume around 10 HEIs will be involved although if more join in then that will allow for more budget.  

Case Scenario 2

QAHE wishes to improve the spaces available for business students and has asked you to project manage the refurbishment and redevelopment of the London/Birmingham/Manchester (please choose one based on your location) Campus. The preference is for tiered seating that can be retracted, together with acoustic panels on the walls to make it a better teaching space. You have been asked to project manage this process with support from the Facilities Management department at QAHE and have been given a provisional budget of £100k.  Bear in mind that the work must not cause disruption to teaching timetables.

Case Scenario 3

QAHE has recognised that students do not always know what is going on at QAHE Campuses outside of timetabled class sessions and in addition can find it difficult to contact representatives from clubs and societies. Hence, in order to help increase student engagement with extra-curricular activities, QAHE’s Student Forum Representative has asked you to project manage the development of a new QAHE Recreation mobile phone app which will provide day by day details of QAHE clubs and societies’ events, links to contact details and the freedom for students to publicise their own events.  Grant funding from O2 (one of their directors is a former QAHE student) has given you a budget of £200k and the university, although supportive, wants it ready to be used by students at the start of the next academic year.

Case Scenario 4

QAHE Business Management Faculty has designed a new degree course in Sustainable Business, focusing on ethical and environmental business issues.  This is now in its third year so there are 30 final year students now on this course. The Business Faculty has secured funding to support a two week field trip to see some interesting sustainable projects in Uganda, intending that this takes place in May, after the rest of their assignments have been submitted. The Programme Convener has asked for your help in organising this trip and you are doing so as a project management task in place of your dissertation. Each student will be funded a max of £2,000 to enable them to go, thus meaning there is a total of £60,000 available for the whole trip. You should assume that staff costs (including yourself) are also funded, totalling an additional £10,000